For years now, I have resisted both MySpace and facebook. Fervently, resisted. I recently relented, quite unhappily, because my best friend moved to Amsterdam and, despite my suggestion that she start a blog, she joined facebook. I too wanted to see her pictures and read about her adventures, so I created an account.
I admit that for someone who has no other online presence, facebook is pretty cool. You can join groups, find friends, chat, send messages, send presents, microblog, and a host of things I have yet to figure out. For me, though, facebook is so much added fluff. With the exception of one thing, it does nothing that I can and do accomplish elsewhere online. If I were to actually spend a long time creating myself in facebook, I would be duplicating things I have elsewhere. I just do not have time for that these days.
Time is the commodity of which I hold the least. Even sleep takes a back seat to time, because really, it is lack of time that contributes to lack of sleep. Well, that and a 10 month old Wee Bairn.
Perhaps, I am getting lazy. Perhaps, I want things to be so easy my brain does not have to function (because let’s face it, there is so little of it left these days). I just want facebook to magically populate and do the things I think it should. Some functions of facebook, I have not found very intuitive. By intuitive, I mean in the 5 minutes or less I look at it every week, I have not figured out a couple things. I know, if I actually spent time to play with facebook, I would find it easy and fun. Again with the time issue.
But still, for me, a duplication.
The only benefit to facebook has been that I have found a couple friends that I thought had escaped into life, never to be found. Indeed, the friend I regretted losing the most to time suddenly appeared again recently on my radar. It was enough to make me laugh with wonder. I am comforted to just know he is out there living, and not lost at all.
I will keep facebooking once or twice a week, but I doubt I put much effort into it. I will keep tabs on my friends, but that will be it for me. Time is short and I would rather read Cake Wrecks.
–Jane, “one bonbon is poison”